D. Ringe's IE Tree (1996)

Attachments :

For the list's information:
This IE tree is from Reconstructing the evolutionary history of natural
languages
by Donald Ringe, et al, (1995) which was generated at the UPenn. It was
apparently the first attempt at using the kind of software paleobiologists
use to create evolutionary trees.

The "root" or oldest ancestor is reconstructed PIE. The computer found the
most consistent arrangement based on "over 200" shared or unshared
characteristics. These included vocabulary and morphology, like verb endings.

Hi stands for Hittite, OI for Old Irish, La for Latin, TB for Tokarian B, OE
for Old English, OCS is Old Church Slavonic, Li is Lithuanian. The X's
stand for what is left of PIE after each language branches off. The oldest
branch-offs are at the top, the youngest at the bottom.

In this earlier version, Celtic (Old Irish) and Latin branch off one after
the other, but they are not from a common immediate ancestor.

In 1997, a new tree was created using 349 characteristics. In that tree,
Latin and Celtic are on the same branch. I'll post the 1997 tree in the nest
message.

S. Long